A meta-psychiatric approach to the 'core' problem in schizophrenia
Cheetham, Anna D'Silva, Karen
Cheetham, Anna
D'Silva, Karen
Abstract
Background: The lateralisation and disconnection hypotheses attempt to understand schizophrenia from a third person perspective. We hypothesised that these two phenomena may also affect the international schizophrenia research community.
Methods: A whole population based, retrospective bibliometric cohort study employing abstracts presented at the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research, Biennial Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia, and ISPS between 1988 and 2004 (n = 10276), was employed. Functional lateralisation was assessed via the numbers of abstracts produced by the countries of the left and right global hemispheres, with connectivity estimated by crossreferencing abstract author lists.
Results: The left hemisphere produced 6889 (67%) and the right 3387 (33%) of the abstracts (chi-square = 1193.46, p < 0.001), whilst fewer than 20% of the authors attending ICSR/BWWS had presented their work at the ISPS conferences, and vice versa.
Conclusions: This international schizophrenia research community has been subject, at the meta-psychiatric level, to the same functional disorders that afflict those it seeks to study. From a second person perspective this implies that the supposedly objective and material findings of disorder in schizophrenia may be, in part, reflections or projections of the observing body.
Methods: A whole population based, retrospective bibliometric cohort study employing abstracts presented at the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research, Biennial Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia, and ISPS between 1988 and 2004 (n = 10276), was employed. Functional lateralisation was assessed via the numbers of abstracts produced by the countries of the left and right global hemispheres, with connectivity estimated by crossreferencing abstract author lists.
Results: The left hemisphere produced 6889 (67%) and the right 3387 (33%) of the abstracts (chi-square = 1193.46, p < 0.001), whilst fewer than 20% of the authors attending ICSR/BWWS had presented their work at the ISPS conferences, and vice versa.
Conclusions: This international schizophrenia research community has been subject, at the meta-psychiatric level, to the same functional disorders that afflict those it seeks to study. From a second person perspective this implies that the supposedly objective and material findings of disorder in schizophrenia may be, in part, reflections or projections of the observing body.
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Date
2006
Type
Conference Proceeding
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Citation
Calton, T., Cheetham, A., D'Silva, K., and Glazebrook, C. (2006). A meta-psychiatric approach to the 'core' problem in schizophrenia. In: Hageman, I., (Ed.) XV International Congress for Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia and other Psychoses, 12-16 June 2006 Madrid, Spain. Massachusettes: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, p.81-81.